Vietnamese elephants are worth for?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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After all elephant nerfs due to khmer powerhouse, Vietnamese elephants may lack any purpose: all vietnamese main units are good against archers, but bad at pushing (besides siege) and vietnamese battle elephants are the worst at pushing…

You dont make elephamts in 1v1 unless you are winning, and in teamgames vietnamese are better going for archers.

When talking for vietnamese buffs, peoplw usually refers to paper money but that UT still have more uses than elephants

Burmese elephants are in a similar situation.

If a buff is needed… How would you buff vietnamese elephamts without buffing khmer ones?

Vietnamese elephants, on the contrary, lack such purpose: all vietnamese main units are good against archers, but bad at pushing besides siege, and vietnamese battle elephants are the worst at pushing…

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Giving back 50% trample damage to battle elephants except the Khmer one (by introducing a BE generic tech that increases 25% trample dmg). Khmer BE is the main reason for the BE trample dmg nerf. Khmer BE is faster and hit harder, and hence harder to counter. Other civs do not cause any problem.

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But vietnamese elephants were already useless before the nerf to trample damage. Even burmese ones were so.

So they need more than that, although one of them can receive a trample bonus as a civ bonus. Manipur cavalry couples well woth tramplw damage when taking pallisades down.

Vietnamese ones are supossed to be meatshields because they lack blast furnace but have more HP after chattras. Trample damage would help but maybe they can be buffed in a more deffensive way.

Giving more HP or regeneration to them sounds redundnant, but maybe its the solution.

Buffing their creation speed couples well with free conscription so they can be massed quickly even without a castle.

Or reducing the upgrade cost for them (althouth I would prefer this for malay)

I dont know.

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I would say this, it fits the theme of more of an archer meat shield . Like with a civ bonus of +20hp or chatras enables a regen maybe like the base zerk or half way between.

On top of the generic trample tech. 25% trample for eles is garbage outside of khmer.

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I suggest to give them conversion resistance and +4 damage vs buildings

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This is better for Malay as their BE is lackluster for lacking 2 cavalry armor upgrades and bloodlines. Cheaper upgrade cost justify the weaker stats.

I disagree giving HP regeneration to such a high HP unit. Berserk with health regeneration makes them better against archer fire and prolonged fight, greatly boosting berserk survivability. BE with regeneration is terrible to fight. Burmese is supposed to be better to absorb archer fire while Viet tends to survive in melee fight longer to protect archer from the back. Giving Viet BE more HP such that they can take one more hit from pike/halbs is enough.

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I think they still have value starting from mid imperial where food isnt thr limiting factor. They are pretty good gold efficient unit

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Viets BE should act as a meatshield for their archers to soak up skirm fire and block enemy cav. And their UT helps in this direction, a bit like civs with SR.

The problem is, that IS, halbs or LC can perform the same role while being cheap, and BE are slow and don’t pose the same threat to buildings as SR.

The fact that viets have BE makes THEM a bit more (situationally) flexible overall, and differentiate them from other archer civ, that’s probably the main reason for them having BE.

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9

Bit off topic, but i do think halbs need a -5 to -10 bonus damage vs elephant. It is so unfair to elephant who cannot run away from them. Elephant without archers just never work

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pikes have +25 damage and halbs +28 damage to elephants. giving it -5 to -10 would make their bonuses lower then pikes bonus, and frankly halbs need those numbers against elephants because literally they are the only unit most civs have for fighting elephants. halbs were specifically added to the game because of units like the War Elephant and the Paladin.

laughs in khmer

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Yes pikes need to have less bonus as well

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yes because they totally didn’t add halbs in AoC because pikes weren’t cutting it against Elephants and Paladins.

you nerf them by 5 to 10 damage and how do you fight elite war elephants? halbs already require an insane numbers advantage to win against them as is.

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13

Adding elephants to your army in 1v1 matches implies replacing one other gold unit because you usually cannot afford three gold units. I wouldnt replace BBC or rattan/arbalester. They are better at killing buildings or units

You can make imp skirms, BBC and elephants but you are better with archers, BBC and halbs or light cav.

Even if Vietnamese received gold shafting tech I think the army comp would be the same regarding gold units.

Besides, vietnamese eco is not very food intensive. They have standard eco with a nice wood discount. You can use the wood savings for more farmers but this may have a limited impact for an elephant army.

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Or bonus damage/armor against pikes, so only pikes are affected

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Well, at a low level (1300), viets elephants + imperial skirm are somehow viable in 1v1. More or less. But I agree. Khmer and malay are in another level.

The problem is Khmer have 2 bonuses that affect the most important things elephants have. Speed bonus affect their biggest weakness, and extra attack make them even more brutal. That, and khmer have the best eco of the elephants civs

Both extra armor and extra HP are not that amazing for an unit that already have a lot of HP.

I come up with extra resistance to conversion for Burmese elephants, and it took a RoR member to talk me out of it, but I dropped the idea. But i think Both burmese and viets need something for their elephants.

Burma could simply get Heresy (at 500G) and have amazing castle age elephants. Or maybe some extra trample damage/building damage as a civ bonus (if the later applies, manipur cavalry could be reworked into something else, or maybe tweak it’s numbers).

Elite battle elephant at a reduced price could be good for both civs Vietnamesse.

Faster fire rate (like, 10% or 15%, not that much).

Idk, they’re several options. The main problem as is was stated before is that elephants are viable only in TG, and you won’t go for either burmese or viet pocket. Hell, even Khmer pocket are barely seen these days

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16

I think the best way to buff vietnamese elephants without buffing khmer elephants, is to remove one of the Khmer elephant bonuses and buff general elephant stats.

I still think the +10% movement speed should be a UT, and the extra attack shouldn’t be with Khmer

If you give Khmer

  • +10% movement speed [UT]

instead of

  • +10% movement speed [free bonus]
  • +3 attack [UT]

you could buff the elephant base attack by +2 or +3

That would help all non-Khmer elephants

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17

yes
maybe war elephant and other elephants different armor class?
IMO BE, EA and Ballista elep suffered too much vs halbs

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thanks for this point, didnt realise they have cheaper heresy. Late castle age/early imperial elephant push is totally possible

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At low level elephant archers can be viable too (i use them 11)

The combo elephant+imp skirm is good because both of imp skirms killing halbediers faster, and elephants holding more halbedier hits.

The only elephant civ with heresy, if I remember correctly, is Malay, which make sense because their elephants are worse at later stages in the age.
Burma elephants with heresy could be great in castle age, but burmese lacks the Malay discount to do an elephant rush.
In imperial age, heresy could help their elephants a bit. Burmese doesn’t have any other power house unit susceptible to monks: their siege is average as much, they dont have paladins… Ans since their elephants are not in a good state your idea could be balanced.

Maybe, I would like to compare khmer, burmese and Vietnamese FU elephants with Vietnamese higher fire rate for Vietnamese.
To simplify my calculations, I will state that Vietnamese elephants now have a rate of fire of 1.8. So, every 15 seconds, Vietnamese elephants would have one extra attack (before that, they deal their attack some milliseconds before).

  • Khmer: 21 attack, higher speed (so they reposition themselves faster after killing a foe)
  • Burmese: 18 attack, +6 against buildings
  • Vietnamese: 16 attack, with one extra attack after 15 seconds.

I dont know, but I feel this may be not enough… I prefer to buff their resilience instead.

The only bonus I can think not related with survivality is faster training speed, which may make elephants more usable on certain situations in which you require a fast defense. At least, they would have some purpose. I suggested this bonus for indians in case they receive battle elephants, but I dont think they will need such a buff.

Other possible buffs are higher blast radius for the trample damage, but this may fit burmese better (so they can use elephants as pseudo-rams). Is trample damage affected by bonus damage?

This may be good, but malay could benefit from this bonus more, as it has been stated

Malay are not in a very good shape, so this could help them a bit, without buffing elephant stats.

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20

Then just a minor buff to the viets castle age UT may solve this?

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